Additional consents

What are additional consents?

‘Additional consents’ are linked consent modules that document decisions about optional elements of care alongside the treatment or investigation consent. Examples include consent for sharing patient information with a national registry, or allowing information to be used for research purposes.

Additional consents can be included in consent templates, or searched for. For example, the following additional consents may be presented within clinician view for a total knee replacement consent episode:

How are additional consents presented?

Any additional consents selected for an episode will be presented within the patient-facing consent flow, and generally follow a similar structure:

• A short introduction
• Link(s) and/or expander for further information
• Patient consent statements

Where required, additional consents can include multi-select choices and follow-up questions. For example, the medical imaging additional consent allows patients to give consent to one use case, several use cases, or to withhold their consent entirely:

The additional consents added to an episode, and the patient’s selections, form part of the overall consent. The patient does not need to add a separate signature for each additional consent.

How can clinicians review patient choices?

After signing, the post-consent view displays the patient’s selections with colour-coded iconography. Where there are multiple elements, the selections will be presented with clear context:

The consent summary PDF includes the consent statements the patient selected for each additional consent:

Clinicians can view the complete additional consent content seen during the consent flow, and the patient selections, within consult view:

What additional consents are available?

Additional consent availability varies by deployment. Some modules are enabled by default, while others require local configuration to reflect jurisdictional or organisational requirements.

Default in all deployments

The following additional consents are available by default in all deployments:

• Blood transfusion
• Medical imaging (i.e. medical photography/video recording during the procedure for medical record/teaching/publication purposes)
• Use of surplus tissue for teaching, quality control, and audit purposes
• Intimate gynaecological examination by a medical student whilst under a general anaesthetic or sedation

Default in UK deployments

In addition to the above, the following additional consents are available by default in UK deployments:

• National Joint Registry (not applicable in Scotland)
• National Bariatric Surgery Registry
• National Hiatal Surgery Registry
• National Vascular Registry
• British Spine Registry
• British Society of Urogynaecology (BSUG) Database
• British Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (BOFAS) Registry
• British Hernia Society Registry

Requires local configuration

The following additional consents are available in Concentric but require some organisation-specific information before they can be enabled:

• Beyond Compliance (extension to NJR)
• Robotic registries or video recording systems, e.g. CMR Surgical Registry and Versius Video
• Tissue for research
• Sensitive disposal arrangements for pregnancy loss
• Homecare medicines service

Configuration requirements for the above vary. Individual organisations may also have other locally configured additional consents not listed here.

Important notes

Autoselection: Some additional consents, such as blood transfusion and national registry consent, are selected by default in order to improve compliance and reduce clicks. Auto-selection can be disabled at an organisation and module level, if desired.

Use with custom templates: Additional consents can be manually added to consent episodes created from custom templates, but cannot currently be added to the templates themselves.

External system integration: Concentric does not currently integrate additional consent data with external specialist systems. Documenting consent in Concentric replaces existing paper consent forms but does not automatically submit patient data to registries.

How do I request a new additional consent module?

New additional consent modules can be requested, and are considered on a case-by-case basis in terms of prioritisation, any development or operational costs that may apply, and the local governance requirements prior to deployment. For example, research- and audit-related requests usually require the local clinical research or audit lead to provide approval before publication.

When requesting a new additional consent please include any existing patient-facing information within the request to help us understand your requirements.

Support

For further information, configuration support, or to request a new additional consent, contact content@concentric.health.